State law requires digital college textbooks by 2020

Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos introduces the Kindle DX at a news conference Wednesday, May 6, 2009 in New York. The Kindle DX has a larger 9.7 inch screen than its predecessor, the Kindle 2.

AP file photo

Companies that sell textbooks to California universities must offer electronic versions by 2020, under a new state law.

Electronic books are generally less expensive, better for the environment and often more suited to the way today’s students study, proponents say. And a Kindle weighs a whole lot less than a backpack full of 500-page textbooks.

“Think about kids carrying around all these books — or just carrying a Kindle wherever you go,” said Joan Wines, an English professor at California Lutheran University who is doing research on digital textbooks.

The law, Senate Bill 48, says any individual or company selling textbooks to the University of California, California State University or private colleges must make them available electronically by 2020, “to the extent practicable.” Sen. Elaine Alquist, D-San Jose, authored the law, saying digital textbooks are the future of the market and can significantly reduce costs for students.

Sales of electronic books, often called e-books, increased by roughly 179 percent this year, with sales growing from $47 million from January to October 2008 to $131 million by October 2009, according to the Association of American Publishers.

E-books represent about 3 percent of total trade sales, said Bruce Hildebrand, the association’s executive director. The association did not have figures on the percentage of textbooks now available electronically, but Hildebrand expects publishers will have no trouble meeting the law’s deadline.

“The transition to e-books is occurring rapidly,” Hildebrand said. “The overwhelming majority of textbooks will be available (electronically) long before this law goes into effect.”

Some professors are embracing the new technology, while others cling to traditional books — a reaction similar to what happened when computers became popular, Wines said.

“Not many are doing this,” Wines said. “No one’s going to force a professor to do anything.”

Yet students can do many of the same things on an electronic book reader such as the Kindle that they can with a traditional book, including highlighting and writing notes. They also can look up the definition of a word on the screen, and listen to the text rather than read it.

Last fall, Wines taught a pilot class in critical reading and writing in which she used electronic books, then researched the impact on students. The university paid for the Kindles the students used, and they wrote about their experiences. This month, Wines is presenting her findings in Berlin, Germany and Texas.

Generally, she found students adapted easily.

Freshman Jackie Abramson, 18, was in that class. She sees advantages to e-textbooks — they’re lightweight and read to you, plus you can look up words. But there were disadvantages, too. Kindles are expensive, at roughly $259 or $489 depending on the size, and you have to keep them charged. Their format makes it harder to cite passages because they use locations, rather than pages. And, quite simply, they’re not books, she said.

“I liked them, except it was hard when you went to write a paper because you couldn’t flip through an actual textbook,” Abramson said. “I just like books. I like having a book in my hand.”

Still, Wines expects digital textbooks will catch on sooner than the 2020 deadline in the law, which was signed by the governor in October.

“Publishers will have to put textbooks on Kindle and other devices because the demand will be there,” she said.